Congress center

In submitting its design for this international competition, AIM Hanemian Architects placed a premium on originality: the Agency sought to design a project recalling the ancient architectural style of the ancestors of this very young state. More

Its inspiration was drawn from the earliest sculpted stones, the Khatchkars, which mark a return to life – renaissance – and as such they are a culmination of non-figurative and symbolic art in its earliest form.

The chosen site for the project overlooks the city and is treated by the Agency as a kind of acropolis topped by a citadel-hotel, aligned with the main thoroughfare, Teryan Avenue. It has a vast open space around it, which has many possibilities depending how Yerevan develops. A lake, a public swimming pool, sports arenas, office blocks, an exhibition centre, residential accommodation are just some ideas. A funicular railway is proposed as a link between the Business Centre, the hotel, the city and the upper parts of the botanical garden.

The hotel consists of three stele-like constructions, each clearly differentiated in function:

-60 meters stele: hotel rooms with luxury suites above a ground floor base housing a ballroom, restaurant and terrace and open kitchen.

-50 meters stele: luxury apartments above a ground floor housing conference rooms, offices and a garden open to residents.

-30 meters stele: hotel rooms with a panoramic restaurant and open air swimming pool on the top two floors, and on the ground floor a health spa and garden. At ground level all three stelae are linked by a wide, glazed corridor with a view of Mount Ararat.

The project, which was put together in partnership with the design team COS-Didier Beautemps Architects, major hotel specialists, was commended for its powerful impact, as well as for its potential for flexible phasing at later stages.

“The hotel in former times gave shelter to the first nomads or was a caravanserail of itinerant traders, or perhaps an inn for families at leisure in the countryside. It ought in our time to afford us the experience of living very special moments in a parallel universe – in a new visual and materiel galaxy where the wasted time of daily constraint is elided, a galaxy propitious for the awakening of all our senses in a dream-like continuum of encounters fed, if fleetingly, by the presence of an unknown force close by”.